Ascending Dreams
by Alex Damien
Summary: What the Cosmos warriors dream about, what they want, what they fear and what they miss. Paladin CecilxWoLxDark Knight Cecil, SquallxBartz
1. Chapter 1

**Ascending Dreams **

**Shared Nightmares**

**By: Alex Damien**

"_**If dreams ascend to the heights like smoke…"**_

The Cosmos warriors seeked refuge in one of the few remaining buildings still scattered around the battlefield that pieces of the world had become.

Most of the warriors collapsed from exhaustion as soon as they found a suitable piece of floor to sleep on, while others stayed awake, with vacant eyes open.

"I'll…I'll do the first watch," said Cloud, and Squall laid next to him, with eyes open in case Cloud's stopped seeing. The weight of constant battle forced them to stay up, but it was so easy to fall back.

Cecil took his eyes away from Cloud and Squall to see Light descend the nearby stairs.

"There's a good view from the second floor. Firion, Ingus and I will stay up there and take turns to watch from there too. Better to be on the safe side."

"Are you sure? I can go instead of-"

"No. We'll be fine, I assure you."

"Light," Cecil called, in a low voice, trying to keep himself in place. "Do have more trust in me."

"I trust you," Light said, in that cold _perfect knight_ tone he used just to play the part.

"Cosmos summoned me."

"Do you mean I don't trust her judgment?"

"I didn't-!"

Cecil to a few steps forward, such that they were hidden from the others' view in the stairs.

"I trust Cosmos, Cecil. If she has chosen you, then she must have been right."

"No, you don't trust Cosmos, Light, you simply bow to her every wish. I want you to trust me, by yourself, for who I am."

Cecil took Light's hand, but the warriors pulled it away.

"My feelings do not matter in this war, Cecil. Be strong, either in light or in darkness, that is all I ask."

"And I ask that you be a person, and not merely a puppet."

"I fear you all might have arrived a little too late for that," said Light with a tense sime, and for the first time, Cecil saw the last remains of a man there. He stepped forward, almost unconsciously trapping Light against the wall.

"If you…If you want to talk…"

"I don't."

"Light, I mean it."

"Stop calling me names I don't have."

"I'm just trying to help."

"Try helping yourself first, then."

Cecil slapped him.

"Bastard," he said, and waited for the other to act, but the warrior didn't move, and Cecil gave up. "…Sorry."

"No. It, it was my fault. I'm afraid I might have been a little too harsh lately."

"It is hard on all of us. I shouldn't have asked so much of you."

Cecil looked down to leave, but the warrior took his hand, entwining their fingers.

"The light might have blinded me to the pain of others. I'm…very sorry, for being so mean to you as of late."

Cecil felt a heat rise to his face, and he let his eyes res in the fray locks framing the warrior's face.

"It's nothing. I understand."

Cecil's fingers itched to pass his hand among that hair and _pull_. To push Light against the wall, and-

"I'll see you tomorrow," said the warrior, letting go of him and going back upstairs. Cecil was left standing in the third step of the stairs and wondering where all those weird feelings had come from.

He went to sleep on another room, determined to make the most of his sleep before his watch turn arrived, and to not think about the nameless warrior sleeping directly above him.

And so he slept, and his dreams, made of a darkness that surrounded an inner light, ascended, like smoke.

To the second floor, where the Warrior of Light took one last look out the cracked window, and laid down to sleep. Too late to dream of anything, for Cecil's constant nightmare enveloped him with cold fingers.

He opened his eyes, and felt the building filled by an unearthly silence. Someone crossed through the door, and the warrior could see the smile in his face as clearly as ever.

"Cecil…? Is there…is there any problem?" he asked, pushing himself up. Cecil approached and knelt down next to him, whispering.

"Light…"

His voice caressed the warrior's ears with the same coldness as the shadows at dusk.

But the word. It made the warrior lean away from the white haired man.

It hadn't been a name.

It was a fact.

Cecil took his hand in a grip that danced between need and hatred. The warrior felt it from the first contact. He knew too much of the things that could be felt through the skin.

"W-what is this? Cecil?"

The other man gripped his shoulder and pulled him closer to bite on his neck. Light gasped, frozen in place. The stench that lifted from Cecil was almost nauseating, almost overwhelmingly so. Before he realized it, he had fallen back on the floor, and the room tilted around him.

Only then did the warrior realize that he couldn't see Cecil's eyes.

Hidden by shadow, he could only see his smirking mouth, with those purple lips he had mocked so many times before.

"Light…I want the light…"

Cecil kissed him. His mouth tasted of smoke.

"You…you're not Cecil. Who- _what_ are you?"

The creature giggled, then pulled at the warrior's hair and laughed. It seemed like some kind of childish being, playing and investigating a new toy.

The thought sent shivers of terror down the warrior's back.

This being, whatever or whoever it was, didn't see him as a person. It saw him as a toy made of light to play with.

The warrior looked to the side, trying to locate his sword, and found his reflection staring back from the surface of his perfectly polished helmet. Bright, blue, _empty,_ eyes stared back from a perfect face. That image was not of a man, but of a doll to be used. Maybe, he really was just that, a puppet to use as another pawn in this war; in this game of the gods. A toy to be used and broken and put together again and again…

The warrior looked away from his reflection, preferring instead to stare at the dark purple lips of the shadow being. Was this the thing that lurked in the depths of Cecil's dark armor?

His skin felt so cold, and yet trembled under his fingers.

The warrior closed his eyes, telling himself that just for once, just that one time, he wouldn't fight back. If he was to be used, he would at least find out what it felt like, to be used by someone different. Just once…just…this once…

He let the dark knight pull roughly at his hair and hit him against the floor while tearing away his clothes and the remnants of his armor. All with that electric feeling of dark glee and malice that made him laugh when he felt how every icy touch of the other one's fingers left searing hot burns over his skin. He wondered if his own contact also left such marks on the dark knight's skin.

He gasped, breath escaping through lips pulled into a painful smile. He pulled the dark Cecil's hair and kissed him, savoring that asphyxiating smell of dust and smoke.

Letting go with someone with no eyes that could incriminate him…The freedom made him smirk painfully.

He let himself be used, ravaged, and torn. In the middle of a scream, he wished to be destroyed completely, and see if the light would call him again. Or if he would be discarded. Finally.

But too late he realized, it was all a dream, and the only things real were his tears, and the last burning kiss the dark knight left on chest.

#

Cecil woke up by a hit on the head from Light's shield. He barely had enough time scream and open his eyes to stare up along the warrior's sword.

"L-light, wh-what…" he stuttered.

"You had such a nice dream, didn't you?" said the warrior through gritted teeth, and his voice dripped the sharp, dangerous light Cecil wished he never had to listen to again.

"Light, I-."

"Didn't you?"

"…I don't think I-,"

Light kicked him in the stomach, then pulled him up by the hair. Cecil was too weirded out to try to attack him. Looking into the cold light of the Warrior's eyes, he could see that fighting back would only worsen the situation, but he didn't understand why-

Light pushed him against the wall, and Cecil found himself crushed between it and a kiss so sharp, he feared it would cut his very soul in pieces. Everything about the warrior was suddenly so sharp, so dangerous; it felt like his presence would break everything around them.

"There it is. Just like last night," whispered Light against his ear, touching Cecil's face in a way that called something resting deep inside him.

A part of Cecil suddenly remembered. Slowly, it whispered of things that made Cecil's face turn completely red.

His screams could be heard all the way to the Chaos headquarters, and it took all the men in service of Chaos to keep Golbez from rushing straight into enemy territory (up to and including the Cloud of Darkness, who in these dire cases was considered a man)

#

**A/N**: I'm wholly disappointed that I had to write Dark Knight!CecilxWoL to ever read it. Come on guys! It's hot!

Anyway, for those who are going "WTF happened here?" this fic was inspired by the phrase at the beginning, which I found in a book of fantasy short stories. The whole point of the fic here being that Cecil and WoL are being captured in their respective nightmares, that Cecil is a darkspawn, and that WoL is nothing but a mindless vessel of light. Just basically what I think they fear more about themselves in the Dissidia!verse.

Of course, if I _have_ to tell you this then I clearly haven't done a good job in the narrative department, have I?

**A/N 2**: WTH? This thing is months , all the way to the first A/N is so old! Months old! It was supposed to be a series, but I ran out of ideas and only got two chapters done. Ah, too bad.

Please, if you liked this, consider leaving a comment to tell me what you think of it. I always love hearing what the readers think. :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Ascending Dreams**

**Misplaced Fears**

"_**If dreams ascend to the heights like smoke…"**_

Squall glared at a smiling Bartz from his place on a tree branch.

"There you go, watch while I take a small nap, alright?"

"Why do I have to stay here?"

Bartz stuck his tongue at him.

"Because, _shorty_ it's impossible to see anything from down here with all this foliage, we'll be ambushed before we manage to see any of the enemies."

Squall sighed, resigned to his fate of spending at least half of the night sitting on an uncomfortable branch, and soon after he looked down to a completely asleep Bartz.

As he watched the dark sky, he started having an uncomfortable feeling. He blinked and rubbed his face to take away the sudden tiredness. He hadn't been all that tired just a moment ago. He looked down to check on Bartz, but everything seemed to be alright.

A little later, he caught himself closing his eyes. He shook his head, increasingly exasperated with himself, and sat in a different, more uncomfortable position.

A few minutes later, he fell asleep, caught in the middle of a dream that didn't belong to him.

He knew it, of course, from the first moment when he looked at a bright sun that brought every color alive, and made his way across foliage that had the clear scent of idealization.

He followed the wind across a forest that whispered of things he didn't understand, and found Bartz looking around the bushes with a yellow feather in his hand, shouting "Come on, come back! Hey!"

"Bartz, what are you doing?" asked Squall, shaking the lose strands of hair away from his face that the wind kept playing with.

Bartz turned around, and looked at him with eyes empty of any recognition.

"Ah, sorry, I was looking for you. You came back," he said, walking towards him, but Squall already knew the other merely pretended to know him. In a flash, Squall realized this was not the forgetting brought by time, but the loss of memory brought by the lingering death.

"You don't know me anymore, can you?" he said, and Bartz fell silent.

"I don't know anything anymore," said the mime, with a tense smile, the one he used to hide anything that might disturb others.

Squall saw himself in the darker parts of that smile, and a slow, cold horror rose in his chest.

"I don't know…," kept going Bartz. "Where am I? …What is this feather? …I was looking for something…for someone, but…"

Squall stepped forward and pulled him closer by the wrist.

"Come on, we have to go back," he said.

Bartz stumbled a little at the forward pull, but laughed it off.

"Hey, hey calm down. Where do we have to go back to?" he asked. Squall froze in place. He looked at the bright greenery and the shining colors, and saw the past run through his fingers.

"I…don't know. I had to find you and go back, but…Let's keep walking. Wherever I had to take you, we should arrive there if we keep going."

Bartz laughed, with a voice that seemed to make the very wind dance, and put the yellow feather in Squall's hair.

"We'll surely arrive _somewhere_ at least, eh? And better to go there together!"

This time it was Bartz who pulled on Squall's wrist and forced him to run forward.

"Get this thing off me!" shouted Squall, but didn't dare to swat off the yellow feather.

Bartz laughed more, and with his cape flipping and golden armor shining, Squall felt like he got a glance at a past hundreds of years gone.

He felt like that was a fragment of the past he couldn't find, as if he had misplaced all the pieces of it, and now collected them back; one by one.

Riding on the wind, they finally reached the edge of the dream. Squall had nowhere else to take him, and nothing else to offer. He turned to him.

"My name is-."

"No."

"But-."

"I didn't tell you mine, you don't have to…you don't have to give me yours," Bartz smiled, happy, even as he fainted in Squall's arms. "I liked your hair though…that was nice…"

"Bartz!" called Squall, but as the brown color in his hair faded to white, so did the name fade away, belonging to a person that wasn't there anymore.

The dream morphed, and Squall fell from it. Even the figure of the man he still almost recognized slipped from his hands.

And he had nothing.

Again.

A rock hit him in the head.

"Aren't you supposed to be the responsible and serious one here? Shows how you can't trust _kids_," said Bartz, and threw him another tiny rock.

Squall jumped down from the tree branch and punched him in the face. For a moment he wanted to shout at him, to demand his real name and his real face.

"Ouch, come on! You were the one falling asleep!"

The light from the dawning sun hit a few stray locks of Bartz's hair, turning them silver. Squall realized that if he had looked closer, if he had let his gaze linger a little bit longer; he would have already known.

He knelt down closer to him.

"Sorry! Sorry! I won't throw rocks at you anymore!" said Bartz, crawling backwards.

"What did you dream about?"

"Eh? Uhm, I don't think I dreamed about anything."

"…I did. But you can keep it."

Squall kissed him.

Bartz could keep the dream, just like he could keep his hair color. Squall had and amulet, and a promise, and the taste of his lips mingling with the scent of his hair that whispered of ancient times.


End file.
